VIVE L’EMPEREUR!
Emperorofthebattlefield.com £25
Just when you thought it was safe to carry on using the Napoleonic rules you may already own, this issue looks at yet another new set that you can try out.
Emperor of The Battlefield written by Ian Godwin was aimed at tournament shows with its first competitive outing at BritCon 2023. Published this summer, we bumped into the author at Warfare 2023. These new Napoleonic rules utilise the same simple and easy to use Control and Morale
Test mechanisms as the well proven King of the Battlefield set: Eighteenth Century wargame rules which were themselves first published in 2003 but Mr Godwin emphasises that ‘Emperor’ isn’t just a ‘retread’...
Nicely produced in full colour at a little over 70 pages Emperor of the Battlefield has an excellent and practical, lay-flat wire/comb binding which makes it very easy to use and that’s helped by a couple of play sheets at the rear. Printed on good quality paper, it’s priced at £25 per copy.
There’s a ‘play aid’ called the Emperor’s Widget (and you thought it had been removed at the autopsy...) which covers firing angles and more. It’s drawn at the rear of the book and you can copy it out or you can purchase one for £5 in green Perspex at “Classic Scale “or “Grand Scale “in MDF. Postage and packing within the UK for the rules is £3.75. What are the rules like? Control and Morale are the main thrust of the set with an alternate bound sequence and they aim to give you a big game that finishes in a single evening. There’s an optional orders section and historical tactics are strongly emphasised. You’ll need d6, d8 and d10 dice, preferably delineated in the colours of red, white and blue (of course!) plus a measuring tape and some coloured markers of a couple of different types to mark states of play. The game is aimed at 15mm models but they are flexible and the rules cover everything you’ll need to play one off games. They are very nicely illustrated. Purchases can be made via PayPal directly from the website or via ian@ emperorofthebattlefield.com.